


Bovine Rage

by ToEdenandBackAgain



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: A Cow - Freeform, Aziraphale Fights A Cow, Crack, Garden Contests, Gen, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), The South Downs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-23 13:22:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20008978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToEdenandBackAgain/pseuds/ToEdenandBackAgain
Summary: He looks out the window, expecting to see the army of Heaven or the legions of Hell. Instead, he sees a fat dairy cow.It's crack, and it's Pendragony's fault.





	Bovine Rage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pendragony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pendragony/gifts).



Aziraphale is enjoying a cup of tea when Crowley makes the noise. The soul wrenching sound that rips out of his chest with reckless abandon and has Aziraphale on his feet and prepared to fight, divine light burning through his veins as he throws an arm in front of Crowley's chest to shove him back and behind him.

He looks out the window of the cottage, expecting to see an army from Heaven, or a legion of demons. He has prepared for this day since they seemingly got away with their little switch, and he had hoped it would never come. He prepares for the worst.

Instead, he sees an incredibly fat dairy cow devouring Crowley's daffodils.

"Oh dear." Is all he can manage.

Crowley makes the noise again. His hands grab uselessly at the air before he clenches them into fists and growls.

"Be right back, angel." He says lightly, sauntering to the back door with one hand already raised in preparation to no doubt miracle the cow off into the ether, but Aziraphale is already grabbing it from the air.

"Crowley. Crowley the neighbours already think we're strange, I doubt that the sudden disappearance of a cow will do anything to dissuade that notion."

"My daffodils!" Crowley near shrieks, gesturing blindly to the window where the cow is continuing to graze on the flowers with reckless abandon.

There's a story behind those particular daffodils, and the garden at large, which Aziraphale is sure contributes to this level of panic. Ever since they'd moved to this cottage they'd tried to carefully insinuate themselves into the already tight knit community. It had been going well, all things considered, until a woman named Edith Fritz had poked her head over the neat hedging while Crowley was garden and begun praising his efforts. Crowley had wiped the sweat from his forehead and politely thanked her, and Aziraphale had silently congratulated himself on another neighbour in the bag when Edith had opened her mouth again to announce that _her_ garden was the best in the town, and won the award every year. And perhaps when their little garden was spruced up that they could enter for a bit of fun. Then she had trotted off with a smile and Crowley had proceeded to go almost rabid at the suggestion that his garden was already anything less than perfect.

That had begun Crowley dedicating hours a day to the plants, but not just in his usual manner of scheduled screaming. Oh no, Crowley plucked weeds by hand and misted and fertilized and nestled bulbs carefully into the ground before covering them with the freshly turned over earth; all while Aziraphale watched from the white wicker patio furniture with a glass of ice water in hand. Crowley still engaged in his usual aggressions, though Aziraphale had to beg it be kept to specific hours and miracled so as not to be heard because the neighbours were quite nosey and they would never ask, they would just gossip.

That is to say, there was not a single whiff of a miracle anywhere in that garden that sprawled out behind the window. Because Crowley wanted the satisfaction of winning without one, to shove it into Edith's face with unbridled glee. And now there was a dairy cow burning the victory to ashes.

"I will handle it." Aziraphale says firmly, pointedly directing Crowley to the kitchen table.

"What're you going to do, angel? Have a stern chat with it?"

Aziraphale brushes the snark off with a roll of his eyes because he knows Crowley is experiencing an awful lot of trauma. There had been a frightful few days when Crowley had discovered a fuzzy caterpillar taking up residence in the tulips, until the thing had been carefully collected in the dead of night and deposited into the lush wildlife that sprawled through the centre of the town park. He opens the door and heads outside along the river stone path, crossing the soft grass with his bare feet and coming to a stop an arms length from the cow. It looks up, chewing lazily, before it returns to the daffodils.

"You need to leave."

The cow bites the head off a flower. Aziraphale sighs and places a firm hand on the side of the cow, giving it a gentle push.

"Go on. Back where you came from, dear."

The cow moos and raises her head and Aziraphale has a brief moment where he thinks he's gotten the job done before he feels the heavy weight of a cow being pushed against his belly. The movement is unexpected and Aziraphale loses his footing on the dew drenched grass and falls backwards. He hears a short burst of laughter and sees Crowley all but plastered the kitchen window.

"You can take her, angel!" He shouts through the glass, clearly forgetting his daffodil massacre induced stress in favour of a little tease.

Aziraphale huffs when he gets to his feet. He can _feel_ the grass stains on the seat of his cream cotton sleep pants, worn only for the aesthetic purpose given that he doesn't actually sleep. The cow has almost finished razing down half the bed of daffodils and Aziraphale pushes the sleeves of his night shirt up to the elbows.

"You listen here. I'm being quite polite about this, all things considered. Crowley planted those because I mentioned I liked them so they mean as much to me as they do to him and I quite liked these pants and now they're ruined. I might not waste a miracle on you but I will _certainly_ not allow you to destroy this beautiful garden."

The cow moos again and this time Aziraphale predicts the touch of the heavy head, dodging out of the way to plant both hands on the side of the animal and _shove_. It doesn't move, and Aziraphale mutters under his breath and shoves again, this time with more force. The cow begins a trundle, an awkward shuffle of limbs as it moves away from the daffodils and Aziraphale sighs in relief.

The cow ducks it's head into the bed of tulips and Aziraphale hands crackle with divine light for a moment before he composes himself.  
“You _beast!_ ”

The words are accompanied by another shove, and a smack to the hind quarters that lands with a thud but no reaction. After a long period of attempted coaxing, more shoving, getting a running start behind his pushes, and throwing the entirety of his weight at the cow until his bare feet are digging into the ground, Aziraphale has broken a sweat and the cow has barely budged.

“I’ve only ever liked your kind one way, my dear. With _gravy.”_

He feels a little bad, after the words leave his mouth and the large brown eyes look up at him as the cow continues to chew the head of a tulip. He would never harm a creature of the Almighty, certainly not on purpose. But this was beyond the pale. This was unacceptable. This was Crowley’s garden and this cow was blatantly trespassing. Aziraphale also considers the fact that even if he does manage to coax it away, he’s no idea what to do with it after. How had it even gotten in here, past the lovely wooden fence painted a shade of chestnut that was nestled neatly between a row of hedges. Cows didn’t just _unlatch gates._ And they were hardly lost dogs, coming to the door complete with a collar and a tag and a phone number to call. Aziraphale blinks, and then freezes.

He promptly feels _incredibly_ stupid for not considering it beforehand.

The cow turns it’s head and Aziraphale sees the tiny, pink tag attached to its ear, with the logo and name of where this particular cow had wandered in from.

Aziraphale sees the tag and frowns, feeling a dark stirring in his chest.

Across the road is a lovely elderly woman named Violet, who at one point owned a bookshop in Wales. She and her husband had come to the South Downs ten years ago when their only daughter had taken ill, just to look after their grandson, and then they had never left. Violet knows the life story of every person in the town, as she is an incredibly easy woman to talk to. Even Aziraphale found himself indulging her on afternoons when she came over, looking for a spot of sugar for her tea and they sat together and made idle conversation. The official backstory he and Crowley shared was that they were partners who had purchased the cottage for extended holidays between months in London. She encourages his stories with soft hums and quiet gasps, patting his hand and smiling deviously.

Because of his companionship with Violet, Aziraphale knows that Edith Fritz’s husband has a younger sister whose second husband has a friend who works at the exact dairy this cow is from. The dairy that isn’t incredibly far from here, all things considered, but far too far for a cow to mosey it’s own way over.

It’s a plot.

“Angel, please, I’m not even mad about it anymore just _come inside_.”

Crowley is in the doorway, clearly still mad about it by the way he hisses at the cow as he stalks past on his way to stand in front of Aziraphale. Aziraphale, who had been slightly put out by the cow before, is now practically teeming with rage. A plot. A dastardly plot to _sabotage_ this garden. _Crowley’s garden._

“Angel... angel you’re glowing a little.”

“ _Am I?”_

The voice that comes out is slightly different than his own, reverberating in the air in a way that makes the cow startle and moo, deep and concerned. Aziraphale can feel the skin of his arms prickling, the taste of ozone sharp on his tongue. The daffodils bloom again, shooting up into the sky as large and butter-yellow as they had been before. Tulips blooms in the garden, surrounding the lone cow in a haze of multi coloured petals. Crowley grabs Aziraphale’s arm and draws him quickly towards the house, slamming the door and rounding on him with wide eyes behind dark glasses.

“We can’t miracle a bloody cow out of existence but you can pull _that_ in the front garden on a Sunday!?” he hisses.

Aziraphale blinks, feeling the sharp sucking of power being drawn from the air before a wash of calm overcomes him.

“Oh. Oh _dear_ , do you suppose anyone noticed?”

Crowley throws his arms in the air, “I don’t know! I wasn’t exactly concerned about the neighbours when there was a damned _bovine_ -” he stops mid sentence and frowns out the window, turning on his heel to open the front door and stick his head out.

“Ah... well, seems you solved the problem.”

The cow has disappeared out the front gate, which is now swinging gently on it’s hinges. Their front yard is quiet. The daffodils look spectacular. Nobody had seen the little spectacle. How miraculous.

Aziraphale smiles.

“No. No don’t smile at me, I was doing this _without intervention_ , don’t you remember?”

“Well, my dear, you were the only one playing fair,”

He explains the situation to Crowley, who sighs.

“I don’t suppose you have proof, do you? That it was her who let that thing in?”

Aziraphale purses his lips and snaps his fingers.

From several houses down, someone screams.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley’s voice is low and tries so hard to be disappointed, but Aziraphale can hear the lilt of a smile, “What did you do?”

“A ‘return to sender’ miracle, as it were” Aziraphale replies primly, “Seems Edith Fritz suddenly found it in her front garden, given the screaming. I do hope the poor thing finds its way back to the dairy, it’s had a rough morning. I was quite rude to it.”

Crowley blinks and stays silent for a long time, so long that Aziraphale wonders idly if perhaps he broke the demon, just slightly. Eventually, he seems to come back online and smiles, dipping his head down to rest on Aziraphale’s shoulder where he begins to laugh.

Aziraphale likes the sound. He laughs too.

He hears all about the incident from Violet the next week, when she pops by with a homemade date loaf that she slathers in thick butter- fresh from the local dairy. Aziraphale smiles around the rim of his teacup as he watches Crowley in the garden, tending to the plants with his usual fervour. The garden contest begins next week. Crowley wants everything to be perfect.

“-she insists it just _appeared_ , but all of us in the knitting club think she might’ve been into a touch of the sherry the night previous. Cows don’t just appear, honestly. She says it trampled half her garden before anyone could wrangle it. She’s had to pull out of the competition, but I heard from Joseph down the street that the judges found out she’s been dabbling in all kinds of unsavoury things with the other competitors. Sabotage.” she whispers conspiratorially, adding a wink for good measure, “She might even need to leave town if the gossip keeps up.”

“Oh, how _unfortunate_ ,” Aziraphale drawls, catching the raised eyebrow he gets from Violet and arranging his face into something that he hopes looks sympathetic.

Crowley wins the garden award, of course. He stands beside his plants with a wide smile and accepts the small plaque, engraved with “Anthony J Crowley- Best Garden”. Afterwards, when the photographs are taken and the judges have left, and Aziraphale has accepted no less than four congratulatory pies from people who have lost to Edith Fritz before, Crowley pulls Aziraphale out into the garden and fidgets with something behind his back.

“Crowley?”

Crowley reveals a garden stake in the shape of a large, fat, dairy cow. And then another, a crude human rendition of an angel, complete with rippling muscles and cascading hair that looks as though it belongs on the cover of a romance novel. He stakes them down into the daffodil bed, arranging them so the cow looks as though it is cowering under the angel’s body, the smug smirk never leaving his face as he blinks ever so innocently at Aziraphale.

“Just in case any other cows decide they want to come in here,” he explains, “They need to remember who’s boss.”

“...you’re a fiend.”

“You _love it_.”

Aziraphale looks at the staked angel, unable to stop the smile that begins to creep over his face. The whole thing was rather ridiculous.

“Perhaps I like it a little,” he concedes.

Crowley smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Just don't look at me.  
> I'm so sorry.


End file.
